Name: Melanie Canon: The Girl with All the Gifts Age: 10 Gender: female Canon Point: After Helen Justineau gives her the book of Greek myths Background Link: Melanie comes from a world that has been overrun by what is essentially the zombie apocalypse, here taking the form of a parasitic fungus called Ophiocordyceps (which really exists in the insect world and is super creepy). When someone is infected, the fungus invades and overpowers the brain of its host - essentially killing all brain function, in the most extreme cases. With children born to infected parents, however, the fungus develops a symbiotic relationship with their bodies rather than a parasitic one, and their intelligence and personalities are left pretty much as-is - other than the fact that they look a little dead and the scent of human flesh starts to seem really appetizing.
Melanie is one of the second-gen infected. She was found and brought to a British military base when she was younger (she doesn't know how old; the memories are fuzzy) where she serves as a test subject for scientists hoping to study and cure the fungus. Despite her genius-level intelligence and strong emotional range, she is not seen as a human - or even a sentient being - by nearly all of the people at the base. Most of her time is spent locked alone in a cell, and when she is brought out, she's strapped down into a wheelchair at her hands, feet, and head (all the scientists spray themselves down with a chemical to mask their scent, but they still don't want to take any chances).
Melanie's eventual fate, as well as the eventual fates of the other test subjects, is dissection. She doesn't know this. She doesn't even know what she is. Even though she doesn't like most of the scientists, she ultimately feels grateful that she's on the base. After all, being locked up means that she's safe from the monsters outside... right?
Inventory: - a white shift dress - white pants - white shoes - a copy of the book Tales the Muses Told: Greek Myths by Roger Lancelyn Green
Personality: Despite the fungus taking up residence in her brain, Melanie is first and foremost a little girl. She's full of an intense curiosity about the world around her and hoards all the information she can get about her surroundings, in large part because the surroundings she's used to are so small and confined. Her high intelligence goes hand in hand with her curiosity, allowing her to soak up things she learns with ease. But locked up at the base, she doesn't get much of a chance to use her intelligence - at this point in canon, she has very little practical knowledge, which means that she's quite naive. Her understanding of the world comes almost entirely from things her teachers tell her, all of which are designed to study and test her ability to learn and none of which are supposed to actually be useful to her. The few other things that she does know - little snippets that she's overheard in conversations that she wasn't supposed to be listening to - are completely contextless, and therefore confusing at best and incomprehensible at worst.
However, this naiveté is purely an environmentally-caused trait, and something that she ends up shedding extremely quickly when she finds herself outside the base later on. Later canon shows that with more of the world at her disposal, she's very capable of adapting and applying what she learns to her own life when given the opportunity. At the beginning of the book, she's completely at the mercy of the scientists at the lab, and she doesn't rebel or try to cause trouble (other than talking back, and that's literally only once). By the end, she's threatening and controlling her would-be dissector with her own scalpel, and confidently making high-consequence world-changing decisions all by herself. She has a lot of untapped potential in her - she just has to realize that it's there. One of the ultimate sources of this inner strength is in her sense of loyalty and her desire to keep those that she cares about safe. She quickly positions herself as the protector of Miss Justineau - her favorite teacher, who she loves boundlessly and endlessly - despite the fact that she's just a kid and Miss Justineau is an adult. She fights for her, stands up to soldiers with guns for her, and even kills for her. When it comes to defending the people who are the most important to her, Melanie is fearless.
Last but absolutely not least, Melanie's true nature will always be an inescapable part of her life, though she doesn't yet know it. The scientists do not tell the children what they are, or what their true reason for being at the base is. They also douse themselves in chemicals whenever they come into work, hiding their scent so that the children won't feel the urge to try to attack. This means that hunger for human flesh is both an intrinsic part of who and what she is... and something that she has very little experience with. The first time she really felt it, it was directed at Miss Justineau, and she ended up nearly taking a bite out of her. The incident left her feeling horrified, confused, and incredibly ashamed. Later, when she learns more about herself and begins to get used to the idea, she's ruthlessly pragmatic about it. When traveling in a small group of two soldiers, one scientist, and Miss Justineau, Melanie sides with the soldiers when they suggest things like muzzling her, making her sleep outside, and locking her in a cage (this is even as Justineau protests that that's cruel and inhumane). When she's unmuzzled or her hands are untied, she's the first to remind them to keep their guns pointed at her, so they can shoot her if she loses herself and starts to attack. More than anything else, she wants to not hurt innocent people.
Throughout the book, the Greek myth of Pandora resonates with Melanie deeply, though for different reasons at different points of her life. When she first learns about her at the base, she immediately identifies with Pandora's lack of mortal parents. She daydreams about being a special, gifted girl herself, created and beloved by the gods. And later, after she finds about the secret of her own biology, she identifies with her for a deeper, darker reason: just as Pandora's greatest weakness was her curiosity, Melanie's greatest weakness is her hunger. And she fears that, like Pandora, she won't be able to resist giving in to it in the end.
Flavor Abilities: Her general appearance would fall under this category - she's mostly human-looking, but her skin is very pale and cold to the touch, and she doesn't give off any sort of bodily warmth. Looking over old FAQ comments, I'd love to have this sort of set-up with her, or something similar to the route Jax took with Beckett - she'd need to eat actual food on a regular basis like everybody else, but would still feel the near-uncontrollable urge to attack and snack on people if they got close enough to her.
Lastly, she has an extremely high IQ, and is particularly good at fact retention and mathematical problem-solving. This isn't actually a superhuman ability for her, but I figure it's worth mentioning anyway just to be safe.
Suitability: Norfinbury would be at once overwhelming and exhilarating for her. Her entire life at home consists of the same extremely restricted routine day in and day out, and suddenly being thrust into an unpredictable landscape with much less routine is something that she would absolutely not be prepared for. However, she's a very quick learner, and she'd take advantage of all the new, different people she'd have access to (another thing she wouldn't be used to) in order to do her best to survive. Her days would be dominated by discovery more than anything else, simply because everything would be novel to her.
Once she figured out that she's a danger to others, she'd be extremely wary of being near them, and would probably insist on traveling on by herself most of the time. People who didn't inspire bloodlust in her (non-organics or other dead-ish people, basically) would be a huge relief to her, and if she made a friend who fell into that category she'd be thrilled. Another important thing to mention is that she'd be coming in soon after having tried to chomp on her favorite, adored teacher, something that was confusing and mildly traumatizing to her. She'd need to process and unpack this, either on her own or with the help of others - particularly if she also ended up attacking someone in town, which would be likely to happen at some point.
RP Samples:
log sample
By the end of her second day in Norfinbury, Melanie's throat starts to feel dry and parched. Her lips chap. Her stomach growls and she feels hungry, which makes her chest knot up with anxiety and memory.
She doesn't know what to do, so she worriedly calls the lady who'd been so nice to her on her first day, telling her the problem but not telling her why it scares her. On the video, the lady spots Melanie's bag with its untouched rations and water bottles, and she gently suggests that Melanie have something to eat and drink.
It seems like a strange suggestion to Melanie. It's only been a few days since chow time, and anyway, this isn't the kind of food that she eats. She'd just assumed it wasn't her food, even though she'd been told that the bag was hers, and she'd actually been planning to leave it behind when she finally left the house, for someone else who actually needed it to find. She'd tried to explain to the lady what Dr. Selkirk had said - that she ate different food from normal children, and only once a week, because that was how her body worked. But the lady insists - really insists, her voice sounding tight and worried for Melanie. Melanie likes the idea of someone being worried and concerned over her (even though she also feels kind of bad about it), and so she decides to try. Just to make her happy. The food isn't anything special, but she dutifully eats it down until it's gone. The water is next, and the lady encourages her again, telling her that that's really the most important thing - even more important than food. Melanie is, again, skeptical. She doesn't drink at home. She's never had anything liquid before in her life. That's another thing that Dr. Selkirk had told her - she gets all the water she needs from the meat she eats. But she takes a tentative, messy sip, once the lady on the video really starts pleading. It helps, like the food, but she likes it even less. Some of it spills out of the corners of her mouth and dribbles down her chin, wetting the front of her shirt, and even what she manages to swallow feels funny and unpleasant going down her throat. It's satisfying, but in a grim way. The lady tells her it'll get better in time, and she only doesn't like it now because she's not used to it. She makes her promise to take either four small sips or two big sips every hour, even if her throat doesn't hurt. Melanie promises.
Food and drink aren't the only strange things here. Far from it. Some are things that she's read about (though, invariably, they always turn out to be just a little bit different from how they were in the stories), and some are entirely new. She revels at them all, even the things that other people say are normal and nothing special. Long, narrow staircases. Hats made of brightly-colored yarn. Doorknobs that turn under her hand - her hand - even though she isn't a grown-up or a soldier or a teacher. Other people talk about trade; about giving away things that they don't want. Melanie doesn't think she'll ever want to do that. Everything she finds is a treasure, and if she can take it and keep it and marvel at it forever, then she will.
Re: that last link - I know we're not supposed to use intro-style posts for app samples, but since I already have the non-intro network and log samples I figured I might as well throw it in for good measure!
Melanie | The Girl with All the Gifts
Name: Iddy
Age: 26
Contact Info: ZieglerFan719@gmail.com /
Other Characters: Alfie Solomons |
Character Information
Name: Melanie
Canon: The Girl with All the Gifts
Age: 10
Gender: female
Canon Point: After Helen Justineau gives her the book of Greek myths
Background Link:
Melanie comes from a world that has been overrun by what is essentially the zombie apocalypse, here taking the form of a parasitic fungus called Ophiocordyceps (which really exists in the insect world and is super creepy). When someone is infected, the fungus invades and overpowers the brain of its host - essentially killing all brain function, in the most extreme cases. With children born to infected parents, however, the fungus develops a symbiotic relationship with their bodies rather than a parasitic one, and their intelligence and personalities are left pretty much as-is - other than the fact that they look a little dead and the scent of human flesh starts to seem really appetizing.
Melanie is one of the second-gen infected. She was found and brought to a British military base when she was younger (she doesn't know how old; the memories are fuzzy) where she serves as a test subject for scientists hoping to study and cure the fungus. Despite her genius-level intelligence and strong emotional range, she is not seen as a human - or even a sentient being - by nearly all of the people at the base. Most of her time is spent locked alone in a cell, and when she is brought out, she's strapped down into a wheelchair at her hands, feet, and head (all the scientists spray themselves down with a chemical to mask their scent, but they still don't want to take any chances).
Melanie's eventual fate, as well as the eventual fates of the other test subjects, is dissection. She doesn't know this. She doesn't even know what she is. Even though she doesn't like most of the scientists, she ultimately feels grateful that she's on the base. After all, being locked up means that she's safe from the monsters outside... right?
And here's the book's Wikipedia page just to round things out.
Inventory:
- a white shift dress
- white pants
- white shoes
- a copy of the book Tales the Muses Told: Greek Myths by Roger Lancelyn Green
Personality:
Despite the fungus taking up residence in her brain, Melanie is first and foremost a little girl. She's full of an intense curiosity about the world around her and hoards all the information she can get about her surroundings, in large part because the surroundings she's used to are so small and confined. Her high intelligence goes hand in hand with her curiosity, allowing her to soak up things she learns with ease. But locked up at the base, she doesn't get much of a chance to use her intelligence - at this point in canon, she has very little practical knowledge, which means that she's quite naive. Her understanding of the world comes almost entirely from things her teachers tell her, all of which are designed to study and test her ability to learn and none of which are supposed to actually be useful to her. The few other things that she does know - little snippets that she's overheard in conversations that she wasn't supposed to be listening to - are completely contextless, and therefore confusing at best and incomprehensible at worst.
However, this naiveté is purely an environmentally-caused trait, and something that she ends up shedding extremely quickly when she finds herself outside the base later on. Later canon shows that with more of the world at her disposal, she's very capable of adapting and applying what she learns to her own life when given the opportunity. At the beginning of the book, she's completely at the mercy of the scientists at the lab, and she doesn't rebel or try to cause trouble (other than talking back, and that's literally only once). By the end, she's threatening and controlling her would-be dissector with her own scalpel, and confidently making high-consequence world-changing decisions all by herself. She has a lot of untapped potential in her - she just has to realize that it's there. One of the ultimate sources of this inner strength is in her sense of loyalty and her desire to keep those that she cares about safe. She quickly positions herself as the protector of Miss Justineau - her favorite teacher, who she loves boundlessly and endlessly - despite the fact that she's just a kid and Miss Justineau is an adult. She fights for her, stands up to soldiers with guns for her, and even kills for her. When it comes to defending the people who are the most important to her, Melanie is fearless.
Last but absolutely not least, Melanie's true nature will always be an inescapable part of her life, though she doesn't yet know it. The scientists do not tell the children what they are, or what their true reason for being at the base is. They also douse themselves in chemicals whenever they come into work, hiding their scent so that the children won't feel the urge to try to attack. This means that hunger for human flesh is both an intrinsic part of who and what she is... and something that she has very little experience with. The first time she really felt it, it was directed at Miss Justineau, and she ended up nearly taking a bite out of her. The incident left her feeling horrified, confused, and incredibly ashamed. Later, when she learns more about herself and begins to get used to the idea, she's ruthlessly pragmatic about it. When traveling in a small group of two soldiers, one scientist, and Miss Justineau, Melanie sides with the soldiers when they suggest things like muzzling her, making her sleep outside, and locking her in a cage (this is even as Justineau protests that that's cruel and inhumane). When she's unmuzzled or her hands are untied, she's the first to remind them to keep their guns pointed at her, so they can shoot her if she loses herself and starts to attack. More than anything else, she wants to not hurt innocent people.
Throughout the book, the Greek myth of Pandora resonates with Melanie deeply, though for different reasons at different points of her life. When she first learns about her at the base, she immediately identifies with Pandora's lack of mortal parents. She daydreams about being a special, gifted girl herself, created and beloved by the gods. And later, after she finds about the secret of her own biology, she identifies with her for a deeper, darker reason: just as Pandora's greatest weakness was her curiosity, Melanie's greatest weakness is her hunger. And she fears that, like Pandora, she won't be able to resist giving in to it in the end.
Flavor Abilities:
Her general appearance would fall under this category - she's mostly human-looking, but her skin is very pale and cold to the touch, and she doesn't give off any sort of bodily warmth. Looking over old FAQ comments, I'd love to have this sort of set-up with her, or something similar to the route Jax took with Beckett - she'd need to eat actual food on a regular basis like everybody else, but would still feel the near-uncontrollable urge to attack and snack on people if they got close enough to her.
Lastly, she has an extremely high IQ, and is particularly good at fact retention and mathematical problem-solving. This isn't actually a superhuman ability for her, but I figure it's worth mentioning anyway just to be safe.
Suitability:
Norfinbury would be at once overwhelming and exhilarating for her. Her entire life at home consists of the same extremely restricted routine day in and day out, and suddenly being thrust into an unpredictable landscape with much less routine is something that she would absolutely not be prepared for. However, she's a very quick learner, and she'd take advantage of all the new, different people she'd have access to (another thing she wouldn't be used to) in order to do her best to survive. Her days would be dominated by discovery more than anything else, simply because everything would be novel to her.
Once she figured out that she's a danger to others, she'd be extremely wary of being near them, and would probably insist on traveling on by herself most of the time. People who didn't inspire bloodlust in her (non-organics or other dead-ish people, basically) would be a huge relief to her, and if she made a friend who fell into that category she'd be thrilled. Another important thing to mention is that she'd be coming in soon after having tried to chomp on her favorite, adored teacher, something that was confusing and mildly traumatizing to her. She'd need to process and unpack this, either on her own or with the help of others - particularly if she also ended up attacking someone in town, which would be likely to happen at some point.
RP Samples:
log sample
By the end of her second day in Norfinbury, Melanie's throat starts to feel dry and parched. Her lips chap. Her stomach growls and she feels hungry, which makes her chest knot up with anxiety and memory.
She doesn't know what to do, so she worriedly calls the lady who'd been so nice to her on her first day, telling her the problem but not telling her why it scares her. On the video, the lady spots Melanie's bag with its untouched rations and water bottles, and she gently suggests that Melanie have something to eat and drink.
It seems like a strange suggestion to Melanie. It's only been a few days since chow time, and anyway, this isn't the kind of food that she eats. She'd just assumed it wasn't her food, even though she'd been told that the bag was hers, and she'd actually been planning to leave it behind when she finally left the house, for someone else who actually needed it to find. She'd tried to explain to the lady what Dr. Selkirk had said - that she ate different food from normal children, and only once a week, because that was how her body worked. But the lady insists - really insists, her voice sounding tight and worried for Melanie. Melanie likes the idea of someone being worried and concerned over her (even though she also feels kind of bad about it), and so she decides to try. Just to make her happy. The food isn't anything special, but she dutifully eats it down until it's gone. The water is next, and the lady encourages her again, telling her that that's really the most important thing - even more important than food. Melanie is, again, skeptical. She doesn't drink at home. She's never had anything liquid before in her life. That's another thing that Dr. Selkirk had told her - she gets all the water she needs from the meat she eats. But she takes a tentative, messy sip, once the lady on the video really starts pleading. It helps, like the food, but she likes it even less. Some of it spills out of the corners of her mouth and dribbles down her chin, wetting the front of her shirt, and even what she manages to swallow feels funny and unpleasant going down her throat. It's satisfying, but in a grim way. The lady tells her it'll get better in time, and she only doesn't like it now because she's not used to it. She makes her promise to take either four small sips or two big sips every hour, even if her throat doesn't hurt. Melanie promises.
Food and drink aren't the only strange things here. Far from it. Some are things that she's read about (though, invariably, they always turn out to be just a little bit different from how they were in the stories), and some are entirely new. She revels at them all, even the things that other people say are normal and nothing special. Long, narrow staircases. Hats made of brightly-colored yarn. Doorknobs that turn under her hand - her hand - even though she isn't a grown-up or a soldier or a teacher. Other people talk about trade; about giving away things that they don't want. Melanie doesn't think she'll ever want to do that. Everything she finds is a treasure, and if she can take it and keep it and marvel at it forever, then she will.
TDM samples
TDM thread (network --> in-person)
TDM starter (network)
Re: that last link - I know we're not supposed to use intro-style posts for app samples, but since I already have the non-intro network and log samples I figured I might as well throw it in for good measure!